The Kansas Legislature Has Corporate-Sponsored Lunches Nearly Every Day

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where if he needs a third eye, he just grows it.

Let's begin in Tennessee, where people are angry at the Constitution. No, not that Constitution. Not that faded one that hangs in the National Archives, but the one that Jesus wrote and handed out along with loaves and fishes and water turned to wine. Not the one with that strange business about no law establishing religion. The one that says Christians are immune, no-backsies, from rules that we all have to follow.

Bledsoe County Schools Superintendent Jennifer Terry recently told the media that due to a complaint, the school is now banning religious distributions, meaning that the Christian group Gideons International will be barred from the school going forward. Gideon Chaplain Charlie Queen says that the decision surprises him, because he has been giving Bibles away in local schools for many years. Kids are free to take one or pass them up with no pressure, he reported. "We simply go in, we lay it on the table, we tell them what it is and who we are and if they want one…they freely take one," Queen said. "We do not hand it to them, they take it freely and voluntarily." For her part, Superintendent Terry insisted that the distribution of Bibles violates the Constitution. "Bledsoe County Schools do not allow the distribution of religious materials from any religious groups. The distribution of religious materials in a public school is in violation of constitutional provisions and well established federal and state laws and precedence," Terry said.

Damn. Now the Gideons are going to have to go back to working the Red Roof Inns.

"That is like a CEO of a company who says you need to boycott our company," Staver said. "Stop buying products from our company because we have a policy that I, the CEO, don't agree with, even though the board of directors has ultimately voted for this policy, so stop patronizing our company. Well, you know what, if that's what your feeling is, resign from the company. "Mayor, if you want people to boycott Houston, why don't you just resign and let somebody else who wants to run the mayor's office and represent the city of Houston and all of the taxpayers and citizens of Houston?" Staver continued. "Why don't you just let someone else do it, because, frankly, you haven't been doing a very good job."

Neither one of Mat Staver's faces is truthful. We should remember this.

The incident comes as the attorney general is due to report the findings of a statewide task force she is leading on police profiling in Oregon to the legislature on Dec. 1. It also comes amid a wave of demonstrations at U.S. colleges including Yale and the University of Missouri over the treatment of minority students. The Urban League of Portland said among those targeted in the surveillance was the Justice Department's own Director of Civil Rights, Erious Johnson, who works in Rosenblum's office and is married to Nkenge Harmon Johnson, the league's president. In a letter to the attorney general on Tuesday, the league's president said it was "improper, and potentially unlawful" for state investigators to target anyone "merely for expressing a viewpoint, or for being a part of a social movement…We are concerned that such unwarranted investigations are racially motivated, and create a chilling effect on social justice advocates, political activists and others who wish to engage in discourse about the issues of our time," Johnson wrote in the letter, signed by other civil rights and labor leaders.

Seriously, I know that "political correctness" is the biggest problem we have in the country regarding race relations, but the open backlash against BLM and against the new generation of civil-rights activists generally is beginning to get just a little terrifying. I'm not saying we're heading into Fred Hampton territory here, but the intersection between the police, the informal forces of racial reaction, and the media cheerleaders in the right-wing bubble is getting just a little tight for my comfort.

Let's skip over to where-the-fck-else? Kansas, because we're obligated to do so because Sam Brownback is still governor there, and the state's government continues to be the bedraggled lab rat of bad conservative ideas. Of course, those ideas do not fck themselves. It's hard work turning one-fiftieth of this country into an objectivist hellhole. The people doing that work need to survive.

The per diem money is the legislators' to keep, whether they actually spend it on living expenses or not. And it doesn't always get spent. On a nearly daily basis during the session, lawmakers have access to lunches paid for by trade associations or lobbyists. The lunch sponsor is routinely announced on the House floor just before the break. There are also frequent lobbying receptions held in the evenings, where legislators eat and drink for free. In addition, many lawmakers share discounted long-stay-rate hotel rooms or inexpensive apartments near the Statehouse during the session to keep their living expenses down. Lawmakers living within driving distance of the Capitol who sleep in their own beds at night receive the same per diem benefits, although for them, it's taxable income, Day said. Legislators who live outside a 100-mile radius of the Capitol receive the per diem benefit tax-free, Day said.

I love the fact that the daily lunch has actual corporate sponsorship. Do they all have to wear firesuits with the logo everywhere?

"It is an unabashed valentine to our beloved commonwealth," said Joyce Linehan, a 53-year-old from Boston, during recent testimony at a State House hearing. "It says 'I'm in love with Massachusetts' right there in the song." A self-professed "old punk rocker" who worked at a famed grunge record label in the 1990s, and started managing bands when she was a teenager, Ms. Linehan is also Boston's policy chief and friends with Mayor Marty Walsh. In 2013 she urged the Democrat, then a state representative, to back a pro-"Roadrunner" bill. The bill didn't pass as Mr. Walsh turned his attention to City Hall, but the odds may be better this time around. Unlike 2013, the song doesn't face a competing bill pushing Aerosmith's classic-rock staple "Dream On." The bill now sits in the Senate Committee on Rules after the legislature's joint committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight backed the "Roadrunner" bill last month. Republican State Sen. Robert Hedlund, who was elected mayor of Weymouth, Mass., last week, co-sponsored the prior "Roadrunner" bill and is supporting it again.

Oklahoma's lowest scores on the State Integrity Investigation were in the areas of judicial accountability and access to information. "It's not fair for the rich and influential people to have their records sealed while the plumber down the street doesn't have the right to have his records sealed," Stiles said. Gardner, the judge, disputed Stiles' characterization, noting that anyone can seek to have court records sealed if they have been victims of certain crimes, for example. In this case, he didn't want paparazzi hanging out on the steps of the courthouse in Shawnee, he said. "I did it to preserve the peace and dignity of the entire courthouse," Gardner said.

I hasten to point out that the issue used as an example of Oklahoma's cronyism is the sealing of the divorce records of Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert. I love this country. I truly do.

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